Season 3, Episode 5
A Life in the Day
Kady has checked herself into a mental institution after her drug overdose, and Quentin and Eliot are trying to figure out how to find the next key. Meanwhile, the Faerie Queen informs Margo she needs to marry a prince to get access to his army.
Tropes That Appear In This Episode:
- Alternate Timeline: Quentin and Eliot live out their entire lives solving the Mosaic, and Quentin even has a son and later grandchildren. Margo manages to save them with Jane's help, but they later find the letter that Quentin arranged to have delivered, and suddenly remember everything.
- Arranged Marriage: The Faerie Queen demands that Margo marry Prince Micah from the Floating Mountain to secure his army. Margo is actually onboard once she meets him, as he is handsome, kind, and submissive. Then his younger brother murders him and takes his place.
- Cain and Abel: The younger Prince of the Floating Mountain murders his brother so he can marry Margo.
- Call-Back: Margo still has her magical tattoo on her back from season 2.
- Comforting the Widow: Floating Mountain custom is that if tragedy should befall a prince, his siblings will handle his duties—including marriage. The fact that Fomar murdered his older brother to gain the marriage is irrelevant.Margo: What is wrong with you people?
- Floating Continent: The Floating Mountain, except that now that magic is gone the mountain has crashed into the sea and is currently an island.
- Foreshadowing: Eliot and Quentin discuss the task for the third key and the reward for completing the mosaic is a Literal Metaphor, foreshadowing the fact that "the beauty of all life" is also one, since it takes an entire lifetime to "solve" the mosaic.
- Happily Married: The snippets of Quentin and Ariel together strongly imply this.
- Karma Houdini: Fomar seems to qualify. Despite the fact he murdered his own brother in full view of their mother and dozens of witnesses, the tradition of his people means he not only gets away with it but marries Margo.
- Literal Metaphor: When reading the book to find clue on the location of the next Key, Quentin finds mention of the Mosaic, which he knows is a puzzle in Fillory said to reward whoever completes it with "the key to greater magic."Eliot: Don't you just love it when the metaphors turn out to be literal?
- Missing Mom: Quentin's wife dies young offscreen during the Time-Passes Montage.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Alice takes the truth key to Kady so she'll know that Penny is still alive, in a sense. All this does is piss her off since she tried to overdose after losing him and is now stuck in rehab. Furthermore, the cameras catch her talking to him, and since he's invisible, she seems to be crazy and they refuse to release her.
- Off with His Head!: Fomar rigs up an axe to chop Prince Micah's head off just before the vows can be completed.
- Secret Test of Character: The goal of the Mosaic is to "demonstrate the beauty of life." Quentin and Eliot spend decades trying to brute-force a solution with no success. As it turns out, the actual demonstration was the attempt, as Quentin and Eliot live long, full lives while working on the Mosaic. When Eliot dies of old age, the last piece of the Mosaic reveals itself to Quentin, and when he places it in the center of the sand pit it is reforged into the Key.
- Settle for Sibling: Floating Mountain custom dictates that if someone is murdered at the altar at a royal wedding, their sibling steps in to fulfill their duty. Margo's fiancé is killed, and his likely murderous brother steps up.
- Something Only They Would Say: Margo sends a bunny to Eliot and Quentin, saying she's getting married. They're not quite sure she sent it, so a second bunny appears and demands help while calling them "dickwads". That removes any doubt.
- Stable Time Loop: Jane's magic watch is powered by the third key, a key she was only able to obtain thanks to Quentin, who was only able to find it in the first place because of her temporal manipulation to help defeat the Beast. Quentin even lampshades it when he and Eliot first set out to solve the Mosaic, noting that it was solved by the time Jane got there and thus they were likely the ones to do so.
- Time-Passes Montage: There's an extended sequence of Eliot and Quentin trying to solve the Mosaic as the decades pass.
- Touched by Vorlons: Julia learns that the source of her magic is a divine seed Our Lady Underground took from Renard and gave to her.
- Widowed at the Wedding: The hunky prince Margo is supposed to marry is decapitated at the altar by the machinations of his younger brother.
- Write Back to the Future: Quentin writes a letter to Margo explaining where she can find the third and first keys so she can save them from sacrificing themselves to find the third key in the first place.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Margo tells Jane that she thinks of herself as more of a middle-manager compared to Eliot and Quentin doing the important work. Jane insists that Margo is/will be a powerful magician in her own right and will have an exciting tale that isn't just a part of theirs.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: A dark version as Margo cannot believe Fomar's mother and everyone else is okay with her marrying Fomar when he just killed his own brother in front of the entire wedding party.
